Spooky, Creepy Lollies

As long time apartment dwellers, we have little need for preparing Halloween treats for trick-or-treaters. But that didn't stop us from making these ghostly, crawly and jack o' lantern-esque lollipops on the weekend anyway. They are perfect for sharing with little friends and classmates and a fun project to do with the kids.

Once we stocked up on some chenille craft wire and a bucket of lollipops from Costco, we were pretty much ready to go. The method on each of these is straight forward but here are a few notes:

• Spiders: We snipped off the top of a black garbage bag, so it's still useful, just smaller and cut the long strip into squares. We learned that arachnids indeed have 8 legs but decided that would be a little excessive for our creepy crawlies. So we took three pieces of black chenille craft wire and snipped them in half which made 6 perfectly sized legs. First we wrapped the 3 wires around the stick once to hold the garbage bag on tightly and finally gave them knees by putting a kink in each leg at the center.

• Jack o' Lanterns: We re-purposed a small stash of orange tissue paper we had saved from a gift. One green chenille craft wire, wrapped around once or twice held it all together nicely. We wound the end(s) around a pen to give it a twisted vine look. Some black triangles for eyes and a happy mouth finished them off.

• Ghosts: This one's a classic. First we collected white plastic shopping bags (and a few tissues for fun), which were each held tight with an opalescent chenille craft wire. Finally, with a black, permanent marker, we added facial features.